1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a continuous curding method, typically for the continuous production of soy curd products. This invention also relates to an apparatus for continuously making curd.
2. Background Art
In China the making of soy curd products has traditionally been made by the same process for thousands of years.
Simply stated, soy curd products, such as tofu, are made by hand in such a way that soy milk made from soybeans that are ground and the fibre and milk separated. The soy milk is boiled and then coagulating agent is added and mixed to form the soy curd. Then the soy curd is put into a mold lined with cheesecloth and is pressed to remove whey. Then the pressed soy curd is removed from the mold and unwrapped from the cheesecloth. After which the soy curd is cut into desired sized blocks. This process is traditionally done by hand and as such is very labor intensive and time consuming and the finished product is not always guaranteed of a good and/or suitable quality batch. Over time parts of this process have been refined by introducing apparatus in attempt to speed up the soy making process such as mechanical stirrers or mechanical presses. However these apparatus still result batch processing of soy curd and they still involve steps that are preformed manually.
There is a need to maintain a desired consistency and particulate size of soy curd and a need to apply the desired amount of coagulant to react with the soy milk so that clumping does not occur and the consistency of the soy curd block thus formed is uniform and to the desired results.